Flanagan took the words out of my mouth. Not only was he not physical, but Durkin didn't cut off that angle on that second Sankey goal, then went for the over the head check, a cardinal sin if you ask me. He gave Joey all the room he needed to drive underneath towards the cage. Should have remembered the scouting report on Sankey is that he goes for the cage ANY time you give it to him, and rarely passes to the inside or to GLE. Even if he passed off a dodge towards the cage, and even if he gave him that lane to cut underneath and drive, hands on defense would have cut a potential passing lane.
Spot on analysis. I agree 100%. Sankey is almost perfectly built to exploit Durkin's tendency to throw slap checks at the expense of playing for hand/stick position and leverage. Against taller attackmen, he is usually fine just relying on his strength along with good footwork and positioning to be able body up and push attackman around when he needs to. Sankey is so short and quick that he gets underneath and inside Durkin to take away all of his leverage and hardly give him any place to get his hands or stick around to legally be able to keep Sankey from getting in front of the goal to shoot.
Lacrosse Film Room So true. Durkin is much more efficient in playing against bullish Canadian/Iroquois attackmen like the Thompsons or Grant Jr. He would have a much better time defending me then he would with Sankey simply because, as you pointed out, Sankey is a pure dodger who exploits any defensive matchup by easily getting underneath and taking away any leverage. That's why I always recommend defenders to watch University of Maryland's Gordan Murray or Denver Outlaws' Lee Zink. Superb body control, rangy and good positioning. Both me and Quint remarked on how consistent and efficient they play their angles, the perfect defensemen to deal with ankle-breaking dodgers like Sankey.
Maxaïe Belmont Took the words right out of my mouth. Durkin defending Lyle Thompson is the next one of these that I'm working on. I was going to mention that same thing, but figured I would wait until I had the video up to show people. Durkin held him without a point that game, though he had 2 passes that directly resulted in goals but weren't technically assists, hit a post from ~8 yards and hit the goalie's thigh from 2 yards out. I'll definitely be doing a few of these videos on Murray. I need to watch him a bit more to comment specifically on his game and how he handles attackman like Sankey or Jordan Wolf. I do remember him shutting down Wells Stanwick and getting worked by Rob Pannell, but neither of those guys are really in the Sankey mold.
Look at Hopkins poles last season they all were very large and strong they weren't very rangey and they relied a lot on their abilities to bully opposing attackmen but when they play teams that have shifty attack units like unc or even duke they struggle
Megill is a bit different than all of the other elite close defenders in that his greatest strength isn't so much shutting down another team's top dodger, but rather in sliding, quarterbacking the defense and covering for other players' mistakes. I haven't watched every team and defense the way I have Syracuse, but from what I have seen, he's was the best off ball defender in the country and I'm not sure it was close. His off ball positioning and recognition is off the charts good. David Hamlin or Sean Young usually guarded the other team's primary dodging attackman. Megill often would guard the 3rd option or a finisher so that he could be the one sliding or making the second slide. They put him on players they wanted to slide from rather than players they were going to slide to. I'd have to watch the national championship game again looking at matchups to know if they changed things up at any point, but Megill was guarding Case Matheis, rather than Wolf, for at least a part of the game. So I doubt it was Megill that Wolf was dodging against most of the time.
That's true the more I look back on it now how about erhart I'm not too impressed with him and I know quint has a crush on him but for all I know he could be similar to Megill who is your #1 close d man coming into the year?
MrDbtx I'd have to watch Maryland's defense some more to really be able to formulate my own opinion on Ehrhardt, but it's not just Quint who thinks he is really good. He was the 7th pick in the MLL draft, 2nd team All-American last year and preseason 1st team All-American this year. I don't claim to have watched enough teams and players to be able to do things like say who the #1 close defender is, but judging based upon things like All-American voting, the MLL draft and the USA national team tryouts, it has to be Joe Fletcher. He's the only returning 1st team All-American long pole, was the first long pole taken in the MLL draft, was the only close defender invited to tryout for the USA men's national team and the only college player to make the USA training roster. Based upon that, there seems to be quite a few people who think he's the best close defender in college lacrosse.
I was actually planning on making that one when I pulled up the Syracuse - Villanova game that the Kluh video is from. I'll get around to finishing it up soon. So many of these that I want to do and so little time before the 2014 games start.
